I orginally hail from Knoxville, Tennessee. The martial arts community is pretty much 50% Karate, 40% TKD, and 10% Kung Fu. The Karate Community is a dabbling of everything, but Isshinryu is a big one there. There are tiny pockets of other styles and arts, like jujutsu, judo, and kendo, but no formal schools.

Now that I am here in Charleston SC, there is a tiny Isshinryu school (YAY ME!) very few Karate dojos, and a TKD school on every street corner. There are also a few small schools that teach Judo and other ground arts, but that is about it.

7/11/2003 2:00am,

noodles

Hey Rising Phoenix, where are you staying in Japan?

Getting to Phrost's questions:

*Tokyo

*In my immediate neigborhood there are karate, aikido, kendo, and kyudo dojos, and the local university has karate, aikido, kendo, judo, and sumo. Over the city there's probably more karate and aikido than anything else.

*Looking at Tokyo as a whole, you can find anything at all. Japanese, Chinese, Western, Brazilian, Shootfighting, whatever.

*I would guess about 5% of adult males train, maybe 1% of women. However, most boys practiced either judo or kendo at school.

7/11/2003 2:30am,

SamHarber

Manchester - England

Damn near every style you can imagine within 50 miles of it. Aikido is way too common, esp. as its mostly the flower arranging style.
WC and MT are both big, karate and tkd have lots of small clubs. There are some big MMA clubs as well. Also lots of fencing and archery, boxing, amateur wrestling and some pro wrestling (very different to USA pro wrestling though)

7/11/2003 6:05am,

MrMcFu

Hamburg, Germany

Tons of WT/WC/VT - about 40% I would say. 30% Judo and 20% Ju-Jitsu. Only about 10% BJJ, MT, MMA.

My school is only one of 2 (affiliated schools) that teach BJJ. We also do Shooto, JKD, Sambo, Boxing, and Ju-Jitsu.

Probably only about 3% of the people in my area do MA. TKD schools are relatively rare.

http://www.zanshin-dojo.de

7/11/2003 7:45am,

NSLightsOut

Melbourne, Australia

Lot of TKD, Karate and Hapkido schools, lot of Wing Chun, a fair amount of Judo, Aikido and Ninjutsu(Legit or Not, I have no idea), a few JKD places, about 10-20 BJJ,Submission Wrestling or Shootfighting schools.

7/11/2003 8:15am,

VTRguy

PhrostI wanted to get a picture of our members, and the environment in which they live, specifically when it comes to martial arts.

*What part of the country do you live in?"

Washington DC Metro/Central VA

*What's the distribution of MA schools in your area, with a rough percentage of the arts represented?

I'm a newbie, but in 30 mile radius from my house there isn't much. mostly TKD (60%), karate, 1 aikido - supposedly very good, just not convinent for me.

But, from a 30 mile radius from DC there are many options... again mostly TKD (thanks to Jun Ree(sp?) :P ), and karate, aikido, kungfu (downtown), and even a coupla Ninjitsu/Taijutsu schools...

Note: I haven't done a thorough investigation so all of this could be way off.

*Are there any unique/uncommon martial arts offered in your area besides the normal TKD/Karate/etc, including MMA/NHB fight teams?

see above, there could be...

*If you had to guess (unless you know for some reason) what percentage of people in the general community in your area are active participants in the martial arts?

Bad guess - 5%, alot of kids... part of the reason I signed up at the local Ishinryu school, my 9 year old has been enrolled for 2 years now. He's getting to the point where I couldn't help him out at home (pratice, pratice, pratice) I thought it best to learn with him.

7/11/2003 8:46am,

Matt W.

Orlando, FL.

There's a huge slew of tkd/karate McDojos (heck, they hold ISKA comps here). Probably 90%. But there's actually a couple nhb/mma type schools here, maybe 5%, 4% other (a kungfu place and a couple Aikido Dojos) and there's one Judo school. That's all off the top of my head, of course.

There's Marcio Simas BJJ (a Gracie Barra school), there's some other BJJ school supposedly too, but I don't know anything about it. Then there's Kokopeli's Kickboxing that has BJJ, Muay Thai, Boxing, submission grappling, etc. And Din Thomas used to have a school here too, though I'm not sure if it's currently in operation or not. There's also a JKD place. And there's at least 1 Kyokushin place around here too.

And I have no idea what percent of the population does MA.

Regrds,
Matt

"My cat's name is Mittens."
Ralph Wiggum

7/11/2003 8:59am,

Kensai

South West England.

A high proportion of Karate and TKD. Some Aikido and Judo places. A growing community of MMA and BJJ type MA's. Very little in the way of Chinese arts.

As for unique systems I not all that sure. But the quality of the teaching varies hugely from school to school.

I would say a very small percentage something like 0.5% are involved in MA. Unfortunately there are a lot of Kids in some schools, just not mine. phew.

I found it funny that there were 7 schools that had generic names like XYZ Martial Arts Academey and basically gave no infromation on what they taught.

The closest thing to a chain I found was a karate school that have four locations, although that couble be misleading because my school (Kenpo/Wing Chun) has two studios and 5 park and recreation programs but only one number listed in the phone book.